V-Man a.k.a. Vaanan – DIY Environmental Protection Appliance

I, V-Man, shall be presenting a DIY solution to a crisis that affects many of the indigenous communities in this country. Many of these reserves often have to boil their water to have safe drinking water. Over 81 native reserves are on drinking water advisory. I will be demonstrating how kids can build their own cellphone based water quality detection system. This device is known as a spectrometer. After you build and test the spectrometer at my booth you can take it home to become an Environmental Protection Agent. You can analyse material in your environment like a Trekkie using a Tricorder or this can be the start of your own science fair project. For the super geeks among us I will also show how to improve the spectrometer design using a cheap webcam and write your own Python code to collect and analyse the data.

Hands-on activity at the Festival:
Build a spectrometer using household parts and your own cellphone or ipod. Test the spectrometer using sample material I will have at my booth. Then go around the event space and analyse other material you find. I will also provide instructions to download my free software to build an improved spectrometer.